Two of my clients recommended Mad Men to me today at lunch, saying it was great and that I would love it. So tonight I watched the first episode on NetFlix and was bored out of my mind about ten minutes in. Not wanting to give up on it too soon, I watched for another four hours (I know it wasn't that long, but that's how long it seemed). Before it was finished, I stopped it and watched the first two episodes of Peep Show instead.

Now *that* I loved.

I just saw the Mad Men thread--right under my nose (I searched through pages and pages and didn't see it--doh!).

Anyway, nil thread--because my own reply doesn't count.

Femme Folle wrote:


In my experience something that's done with genuine care and creativity will be adored by some and ignored by others, there's rarely anything in between. Unfortunately that's where most TV resides. Mad Men doesn't.

Your loss, Femme.

Mad Men didn't grab me at first, either. I bought Season 1 and was pretty dubious through the first half-dozen episodes, but I was on the road and didn't have anything better to do, so I kept watching. I don't remember what it was that grabbed me, exactly. Probably the Hobo Code episode ("there is no system, there is no lie. the universe is indifferent"). After that, I was hooked.

I loved it from the off, but in the interests of full disclosure I wrote my college dissertation on masculinity in the novels of John Cheever. Mad Men, especially early Mad Men, owed a huge debt to his work, and it's no accident that the Drapers lived on Bullet Park Road (named for one of JC's novels) in Ossining, New York (famously JC's place of residence for many years).

Maybe I'll give it another chance to grab me too, then. I think it may have been the overt sexism that made me close my mind to it. I know the period was really like that, but watching it made me feel uncomfortable in the same way watching stories about slavery does.

Femme Folle wrote:


It's actually a feminist series, even if that might blow your mind right now. Most of the writers are women and the series creator has hinted that while Jon Hamm (Don Draper) is the breakout star, the real heroine of the series is Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson).

I think there are two things to take in mind during early Mad Men and the whiskey swilling, chain smoking, pussy chasing image the characters exude (which AMC definitely played up in promos at the time - it's Entourage in wonderful 3-piece suits from J. Press!).

1) It's true. It's absolutely true. You've said it yourself, but you just can't judge a series for portraying what really happened. High flying business in New York in 1960 was absolutely like that. My parents grew up with a view into that world (never quite in it, but close enough to tell whether it was a lie or not) and originally were interested in the series due to its depiction of that milieu.

2) There is a great deal of character development for some of the central female characters, namely Peggy and Joan, and there are consequences to some of the more cruel and heartless treatment of women by male characters, namely Don.

I think what would make the series appealing to somebody concerned by sexism is that it's very much a story of how women got out of the secretary-whore box and into a more progressive, if by no means perfect, world. Some rejected it, some embraced it as a means to an end.

I'd agree absolutely with all that, particularly that it's mostly about the women. Except to note that although it's "true" it's not quite realistic. Everything is very slightly idealised/exaggerated, in exactly the way advertising idealises or exaggerates. The way Betty Draper dresses around the house is a Betty Crocker commercial. Joan's curves are Cadillac like in their emphasis. It's the aspirational life of the time together with it's warts. It's instructive to go and look at a 1960 copy of Saturday Evening Post, or Life and contrast the documentary features with the ads. Mad Men sits astride both, it's story-telling in one place, it's imagery in the other.

"Cadillac-like"?

Now that FF mentions it, I think I had a similar reaction to the first couple of episodes. The pilot in particular struck me as OTT - showing the worst of late 50s attitudes in enormous doses for shock value. It goes away after a bit.

"Cadillac-like"?

OTT

Cadillac-like = big fins

I'm about six episodes into the first season, and I still find it kind of slow. Not every episode has been OTT, but there have been moments that seem to be shoehorned in as if to shout "look at this! Can you believe people did this back then?!?" Not just the sexism or occasional racist jokes, either. I'm thinking of when Betty sees her daughter wearing the dry-cleaning bag over her head and she's worried that her dresses might be wrinkled, or when a man slaps someone else's kid for running in the house and almost spilling a drink, and the kid's father is fine with it.

I admit to being perplexed when "slow" is used as a critical term for a film or TV program. It always begs the, usually answered, question: in comparison to what?

Cadillac-like = big fins

And bumpers. Especially bumpers.

Admission: I watched the second episode last night and enjoyed it much more than the first. I am now looking forward to watching the third episode. Thanks for all the insights.

Four episodes in and I'm hooked.

Great series, although I think Inca's point about shoehorned moments is well taken. I think the kid-slapping episode would have seemed more realistic if he had slapped him on the leg instead of in the face.

I think the reason I like it so much is because of the pace of it, and because the pace is very much like the pace of a show from the early 1960s. The show moves on every episode, but it moves like real life. Big episodes in life rarely happen in the timeframe of a single TV episode, they slowly develop. The real beauty of the show, is that pit spends the rest of the tim setting the scene, setting the time, and giving all the characters depth, not just the main and guest stars.

It's a lot like a soap opera--but I mean that in a good way.

Incandenza wrote:


This together with FF's first post nails it for me. Had heard so much about this (not in media but from people who usually are right about something I should watch/listen to) and watched the first two seasons. I found it utter wank and way to disturbing to be bothered any further.

It brings the same sort of uneasy feeling as it is watching some of those old US infomercials about precautions to take should a nuclear attack be launched by the Soviets, how they'd be manufactured to scare you about the possibility and make you fear the Soviet. That grey-ish, dull, Sisyphos kind of hell propaganda was back then. This show does the same but instead of the Soviets it's as if the creator wants you to fear the show itself.

Or better yet. It's that scene in Truman show, with Jim Carrey, when his "wife" is doing product placements, when you just want Wile E Coyote to turn up and blow her up, successfully for once. It works perfect as a 60sec scene in a film which is satirical, but in 60min TV-show episodes, even mentioning its name in the same sentence as "authentic", it's beyond my comprehension how it can be regarded as quality.

I just finished watching season 1 and am starting season 2.

I'm fascinated with the way people behaved back then. These people are my parents' generation. I can remember having furniture like that in our home. I can remember my parents dressing that way. I can remember cigarette smoke being everywhere--offices, restaurants, stores. I remember my dad reeking of smoke when he came home after work (he didn't smoke).

My dad had a small amount of film footage of my mother and her sisters walking through a public garden. There wasn't any sound, but they looked innocent and goofy--like the girls in Mad Men do.

I think that's what I really like about it--the nostalgia.